Diameter: 85,788 miles the largest planet - more than 12 Earths could line up across it
Temperature: Range -163° C to >-121° C
Distance from Sun: Approximately 466 million miles
Atmosphere: Mostly hydrogen and helium
Surface: A giant ball of mostly hydrogen and helium
Rotation of its axis: 9 hours, 55 minutes in Earth time (the length of one rotation)
Rotation around the Sun: 12 Earth years
Magnetic Field: Yes
Number of Moons: 63 moons have been identified Ganymede is the largest moon - it is bigger than both Mercury and Pluto

The name of Jupiter comes from the Romans (latin: Iuppiter, Iūpiter and also called Jove), the principal god of Roman mythology, whose name comes from the Proto-Indo-European vocative compound... Dyēu-pəter (nominative: *Dyēus-pətēr, meaning "O Father Sky-God", or "O Father Day-God").

Jupiter has been known since ancient times because it is visible to the naked eye in the night sky and sometimes can be seen in the daytime when the sun is low.

For Babylonians, this object represented their god Marduk and they used a 12 year orbit of this planet along the ecliptic to define the constellations of their zodiac.

In astronomical symbolistic Jupiter is a stylized representation of the god's lighting bolt. The original Greek deity, Zeus, adopted by Romans.

The adjectival form of Jupiter is Jovian. The older adjectival from jovial, employed by astrologers in the Middle Ages, has come to mean "happy" or "merry", the moods ascribed to Jupiter's astrological influence.

For the Japanese, Korean and Chinese civilization Jupiter is the wood star. This comparation is based on the Chinese Five Elements.

Hindu astrologers baned the planet after Brihaspati, the religious teacher of the gods, and often called it "Guru", which literally means the "Heavy One"

In English, Thursday is derived from "Thor's day", Thor was associated with the planet Jupiter in Germanic mythology.

Jupiter internal structure:

Is thought that Jupiter has a dense core with a mixture of elements, a surrounding layer of liquid metallic hydrogen with some helium and an outer layer predominantly of molecular hydrogen. Beyond this basic outline composition is unknown as are the properties of materials at the temperatures and pressure of those depths.The existence of a core is suggested by a gravitational measurements made in 1997, indicating a mass of 12 to 45 times then Earth's mass or roughly 3%-15% of the mass of Jupiter.

The core region is surrounded by dense metallic hydrogen, which extends outward to about 78 percent of the radius of the planet. Rain-like droplets of helium and neon precipitate downward through this layer, depleting the abundance of these elements in the upper atmosphere.

Above the layer of metallic hydrogen lies a transparent interior atmosphere of hydrogen. At this depth, the temperature is above the critical temperature, which for hydrogen is only 33 K. In this state, there are no distinct liquid and gas phases - hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. It is convenient to treat hydrogen as gas in the upper layer extending downward from the cloud layer to a depth of about 1,000 km, and as liquid in deeper layers. Physically, there is no clear boundary - gas smoothly becomes hotter and denser as one descends.

The temperature and pressure inside Jupiter increase steadily toward the core. At the phase transition region where hydrogen - heated beyond its critical point - becomes metallic, it is believed the temperature is 10,000 K and the pressure is 200 GPa. The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000 - 4,500 GPa.

Jupiter atmosphere:

The atmosphere of Jupiter is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. Mostly made of molecular hydrogen and helium in roughly solar proportions; other chemical compounds are present only in small amounts and include methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and water.

The Jovian atmosphere shows a wide range of active phenomena, including band instabilities, cyclones and anticyclones, storms and lighting.

Jupiter has powerful storms, always accompanied by lighting strikes. The storms are a result of moist convection in the atmosphere connected to the evaporation and condensation of water. They are sites of strong upward motion of the air, which leads to the formation of bright and dense clouds. The lightning strikes on Jupiter are more powerful than those on Earth, however, there are fewer of them.

Jupiter rings:

Jupiter has a faint planetary ring system composed of three main segments: an inner torus of particles known as the halo, a relatively bright main ring and an outer gossamer ring. There rings apper to be made of dust, rather than ice as with Saturn's rings.

The main ring is probably made of material ejected from the satellites Adrastea and Metis. This material dose not fall back to the moon because Jupiter is pulling it whit his strong gravitational influence so the ring is a constant flow of material from the moons to Jupiter. Another ring is created by moons Thebe and Amalthea composed of dust. There is also evidence of a rocky ring strung along Amalthea's orbit which may consist of collisional debris from that moon.

Mars was regarded as a malevolent agent of war, pestilence and apocalyptic disaster. Often in an attempt to calm down the planet-god, various ancient cultures offered it human sacrifices. This concept of a evil god was found in the New World as well as the Old one.

In Babylonian civilization Mars was identified as the god of war Nergal. Deity of the desert, god of fire, god of war, which is one of negative aspects of the sun, god of the underworld, and also being a god of one of the religions which rivaled Christianity and Judaism, Nergal was sometimes called a demon and even being identified with Satan. According to Collin de Plancy and Johann Weyer, Nergal was said to be the chief of Hell's "secret police", and said to be "an honorary spy in the service of Beelzebub".Greeks called this planet Ares their god of war. Ares was the great Olympian god of war, civil order and manly courage. In Greek art he was depicted as either a mature, bearded warrior dressed in battle arms, or a nude beardless youth with helm and spear.

In Mayan, Mars is depicted as a long nosed monster or animal, hanging from a band that stretch across the sky and sometimes Mars is depicted to be a regular human.

In recent history Mars was believed to be the home of green aliens which were forced to live inside artificial structures named "canals" and in present time Mars is the best candidate for alien life form, but this time microbiological life.

Geology:

Mars has a meteorite collection on the surface whit the primarily composed of basalt. Some evidence suggets that a portion of Martian surface is more silica-rich than typical basalt and may be similar to Andesitic rocks from Earth, these observation explained by the presence of silica glass. Much of the surface is deeply covered in grained iron oxide dust (from which the red color comes).

Although Mars has no current structured global magnetic field, observations show that parts of the planet's crust have been magnetized and that alternating polarity reversals of its dipole field have occurred in the past. This paleomagnetism of minerals has properties very similar to the alternating bands found on the ocean floors on Earth. These bands also demonstrate that around four billion years ago on Mars where tectonic plates, before the planetary dynamo ceased to function and caused the planet's magnetic field to fade away.

In current models of the planet the interior has a core region about 1,480 km radius, consisting primarily of iron with about 14-17% sulfur. This iron sulfide core is partially fluid and has twice the concentration of the lighter elements than exist at Earth's core. The core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that formed many of tectonic and volcanic features on the planet, but now appears to be inactive. The planet crust has an average thickness of about 50 km, with a maximum thickness of 125 km. Earth's crust is averaging to 40 km and it is only one third as thick as Mars crust, relative to the size of the two planets.

In the formation of the Solar System Mars was created out of the protoplanetary disk that orbited the Sun as the result of a stochastic process of run-away accretion. Mars has a many distinctive chemical features caused by its position in the Solar System. Elements with low boiling points such as chlorine, phosphorus and sulphur are much more common on Mars than Earth.

After the formation of the planets about 60% of the surface of Mars shows an impact record from that era. Much of the rest of the surface of Mars is probably underlain by immense impact basins that date from this time and in norther hemisphere of Mars is a crater spanning 10,600 km by 8,500 km (about four times larger that the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin), this suggests that Mars was struck by a Pluto sized body about four billion years ago. This event created the smooth Borealis basin that covers 40% of the planet.

In the geological history of Mars there are three main periods:
- Noachian period (named after Noachis Terra): Formation of the oldest extant surfaces of Mars, 4.5 billion years ago to 3.5 billion years ago. Noachian age surfaces are scarred by many large impact craters. The volcanic upland is thought to have formed during this period with extensive flooding by liquid water late in the period.
- Hesperian period (named after Hesperia Planum): 3.5 billion years ago to 2.9-3.3 billion years ago. This period is marked by the formation of extensive lava plains.
_ Amazonian period (named after Amazonis Planitia): 2.9 - 3.3 billion years ago to present. Amazonian regions have few meteorite impact craters, but are otherwise quite varied. Olumpus Mons formed during this period along with lava flows elsewhere on Mars.

Mars is still have some geological activity. The Athabasca Valles is to sheet-like lava flows. Water flows in the grabens called the Cerberus Fossae. On February 19. 2008 images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed evidence of an avalanche from a 700 m high cliff.

Diameter: 12,100 km. It is about 1040km smaller in diameter than Earth
Temperature: Ranges from 900F+/- 50F (about 500°C +/- 32°C) at the surface
Distance from Earth: At its closest, Venus is 41,840,000 km away
Atmosphere: Carbon dioxide (95%), nitrogen, sulfuric acid, and traces of other elements
Surface: A rocky, dusty, waterless expanse of mountains, canyons, and plains, with a 200-mile river of hardened lava
Rotation of its axis: 243 Earth days (1 Venusian Day)
Rotation around the Sun: 225 Earth days
Magnetic Field: week

Because Venus is the brightest object in the sky, this planet is known since prehistoric times and as such has gained an entrenched position in human culture. In Sumerian times Venus was named Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) the goddess of love.

In Ancient Egypt was believed that Venus is two separate bodies named the morning star (Tioumoutiri) and the evening star (Ouaiti). Likewise, believing Venus to be two bodies, the Ancient Greeks called the the morning star Phosphorus, the "Bringer of Light" or Eosphoros the "Bringer of Dawn" and the evening star by the name of Hesperos "star of the evening". By Hellenistic times, the ancient Greeks realized the two were the same planet and named it after the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In latin Hesperos would be translated as Vesper and Phosphoros as Lucifer ("Light Bearer"), a poetic term later used to refer to the fallen angel cast out of heaven.
Romans as other civilizations have named the planet Venus after their goddess of love (Venus). In Persian mythology, the planet correspods to the goddess Anahita. In Some parts of Pahlavi literature whit Aredvi Sura and Anahita two separate entities, the first one is a personification of the mythical river and the latter as a goddess of fertility.

Venus was important to the Maya civilization, who developed a religious calendar based in part upon its motions, and held the motions of Venus to determine the propitious time for important events. The named it Noh Ek', in translation "the Great Star" and Xux Ek' "the Wasp Star". The Maya were aware of the planet's synodic period (a synodic day is the period of time it takes for a planet to rotate once in relation to the body it is orbiting) and could commute it to within a hundredth part of a day.

Venus is also important in many Australian aboriginal cultures, such as that of the Yolngu people in Northern Australia. The Yolngu gather after sunset to await the rising of Venus, which they call Barnumbirr. As she approaches, in the early hours before dawn, she draws behind her a rope of light attached to the Earth, and along this rope, with the aid of a richly decorated "Morning Star Pole", the people are able to communicate with their dead loved ones, showing that they still love and remember them. Barnumbirr is also an important creator-spirit in the Dreaming, and "sang" much of the country into life.

Venus plays a prominent role in Pawnee mythology. The Pawnee, a North American native tribe, until as late as 1838, practiced a morning star ritual in which a girl was sacrificed to the morning star.

Shukra is the Sanskrit name for Venus

In western astrology, derived from its historical connotation with goddesses of femininity and love, Venus is held to influence desire and sexual fertility. In Indian Vedic astrology, Venus is known as Shukra, meaning "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras. Modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese (citation needed) cultures refer to the planet literally as the “metal star” (金星), based on the Five elements.

Physical characteristics:

Venus is one of the four rocky planets in our solar system whit a size and mass very similar to the Earth and often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin". Venus has a diameter only 650 km less than the Earth's and its mass is 81.5% of the Earth's. But condition of Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth, due to its dens carbon dioxide atmosphere (atmosphere of Venus contains 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen).

Internal structure:

Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, there is little direct information about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus. The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests that they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate. The slightly smaller size of Venus suggests that pressures are significantly lower in its deep interior than Earth. The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of plate tectonics on Venus, likely due to the dry surface and mantle. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.

Surface geography and geology:

About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth plains. Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator.
The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra, after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra whit his peak at 11 km above the Venusian average surface elevation.

The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.

Mountains as well as the impact craters and valleys commonly found on rocky planets, Venus has a number of unique surface features. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called farra, which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20–50 km across, and 100–1,000 m high; radial, star-like fracture systems called Novae, features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as Arachnoids; and Coronae, circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.

The longitudes of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the center of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio. After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne.

Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it possesses some 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates and has an average age of about 100 million years, while the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.

Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. During the Soviet Venera program, the Venera 11 and Venera 12 probes detected a constant stream of lightning and Venera 12 recorded a powerful clap of thunder soon after it landed. The European Space Agency's Venus Express recorded abundant lightning in the high atmosphere. While rainfall drives thunderstorms on Earth, there is no rainfall on the surface of Venus (though it does rain sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere that evaporates around 25 km above the surface). One possibility is that ash from a volcanic eruption was generating the lightning. Another piece of evidence comes from measurements of sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, which were found to drop by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986. This may imply that the levels had earlier been boosted by a large volcanic eruption.

There are almost a thousand impact craters on Venus evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, while on Earth, it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates that the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Earth's crust is in continuous motion, but it is thought that Venus cannot sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.

Magnetic field and core:

In 1967, Venera-4 found that the Venusian magnetic field is much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind, rather than by an internal dynamo in the core like the one inside the Earth. Venus' small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation. This radiation may result in cloud-to-cloud lightning discharges.

The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising given that it is similar to Earth in size, and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, while its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show that it is adequate to produce a dynamo. This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in the Venusian core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much hotter than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This caused the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, there is not an internal geodynamo that can drive a magnetic field. Instead the heat energy from the core is being used to reheat the crust.

One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core or its core is not currently cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.b

The early records about Mercury can be found in the Babylonian and Sumerian writings, about 3000 years ago. The planet is also mentioned in Ancient China, India, and in the documents laying in the tombs of Egypt. Mercury has and still is hard to see because it does not orbit far from the Sun. This problem was also encountered by the ancient astronomers.

Ancient Greeks called Mercury either Apollo or Hermes. Its present name was given by the Romans, due to the fact that Mercury moves fast before the dawn and after the sunset.

In the recent history, Mercury is believedto be first observed by Johann Hieronymus. He drew the surface of Mercury and kept a record of it in his notes. Schroeteralso studied the planet, until his death in 1816. Moreover, Mercury was observed by Percival Lowell and Schia too, whonoticed dark streaks on Mercury's surface. They thought those were the same canals seen on planet Mars but with the use of a more advanced telescope, EugeniosAntoniadi was later able to map out the surface of Mercury. From his notes, it has been discovered that these so-called Martian canals were just an optical illusion. In present,Mercury images comes from Mariner 10, the first robot that photographed our closest and smallest planet.

Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, there is no atmosphere.

Mercury is 4879 (km) across. That makes Mercury just less than half the size of the Earth.

Mercury has craters like those on the Earth's moon. The largest crater on Mercury is Caloris Basin. It is about 1300 km wide. It was created by a huge asteroid which hit Mercury. The asteroid was probably 100 km wide.

The surface also has big cliffs called scarps. They were created when Mercury cooled down. It shrank, causing the surface to get wrinkled in some places. This wrinkling created the scarps.

There may also be ice at the poles of Mercury because there the temperature is much lower.

Mercury gets very hot during the day and very cold at night. It is very hot during the day (over 400°C) because Mercury is so close to the Sun. At night, however, Mercury loses almost all its heat because there is almost no atmosphere to keep it there. The temperature can fall to almost -200°C.

Mercury rotates around his axes much more slowlier than the Earth, so one day on Mercury lasts as long as 58 days on Earth!

Mercury has the shortest year in the Solar System. It is about 88 Earth days long.

Composition:

As far as we know, the center of Mercury is made of iron. It contains more iron for its size than any other planet in the Solar System. The rest of Mercury is made of rock.

Europa is one of Jupiter's moon slightly smaller than the Earth's Moon. It is beleaved that Europa has a iron core whit a rocky mantle and a undergraond ocean of slaty water. This ocean is deep enough to cover the whole surface and being far from the sun, the surface of it is globally frozen over. The ocean heat comes from friction forces generated by orbiting arownd massive planet Jupiter.

Europa orbits Jupiter every 3.5 days and is phase locked just like Earth's Moon so one side of it faces Jupiter all the time. The friction is generated because Europa has a eccentric orbit (an oval not a circle orbit) so when it is close to Jupiter the tide is much higher than when it is far from it. Thus tidal forces raise and lower the sea beneath the ice, causing constant motion and very likely causing the cracks seen on the Europa's surface from robotic probes.

This tidal force causes Europa to be warmer that it would otherwise according to his distance of about 780.000.000 Km (485.000.000 miles) from the Sun, more that five time further as the distance from Earth to sun. This heat could prove critical to the survival of simple organisms within the ocean, if they exist.

History:

Discovered on 8 January 1610 by Galileo Galilei along with three other moons. Europa was the first moon discovered orbiting a planet other than Earth. This discovery eventually led to understanding that planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, instead of our solar system revolving around Earth. Galileo apparently had observed Europa on 7 January 1610. but had been unable to differentiate it from Io until next night.

Galileo originally called Europa Medicean planet, after the Medici family. This name was used for a couple of centuries until the mid-1800s wen the moons are renamed, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto because it became apparent that naming moons by number would be very confusing as new additional moons were being discovered.

Europa is named after the daughter of Agenor. Europa was abducted by Zeus (Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter), who had taken the shape of a spotless white bull. Europa was so delighted by the gentle beast that she decked it with flowers and rode upon its back. Zeus seizing his opportunity rode away with her into the ocean to the island of Crete, where he transformed back into his true shape. Europa bore Zeus many children, including Minos.

In order for a celestrail body or an astromical body to be labeled as a dwarf planet it has to have a orbit around a star, has sufficient mass for it's self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it has a nearly round shape, has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit and it is not a satellite.

The dwarf planets discovered until now, are: Pluto (It takes 248 Earth days for 1 Pluto year and 6 Earth days for 1 Pluto day), Sedna (It takes 10.500 Earth years for 1 Sedna year and 10.27 Earth hours for 1 Sedna day), Eris (It takes 55 Earth years for 1 Eris year and 8 Earth days for 1 Eris day), Quaoar (It takes 285 Earth years for 1 Quaoar year but the duration of a day on Quaoar is unknown), Ceres (It takes 4.6 Earth years for 1 Ceres year and 1679.819 Earth days for 1 Ceres day)

History of Dwarf Planets:

- The Dwarf Planets got there name by a group of astronomers named the IAU. There were tons of small planets with odd revolution cycles. Instead of adding tons of more planets to the solar system, they made a new group named dwarf planets and Pluto fit into the definition of a dwarf planet. The place were the Dwarf Planets remain in space is behind Neptunes orbit. It is called the Kuiper Belt, named after the astronmer Gerard Kuiper. The Kuiper Belt is a place where remaining building bodies of our solar system are locadet.
- The five common dwarf planets are Pluto, Cires, Eris, Make Make, Haumea.
- Mike Brown estimates that there are more than 200 dwarf planets in the space close to our star.

Moons of Dwarf Planets:

- Pluto's moons are Charon, Nix, and Hydra. Charon was dicovered in 1978. Nix and Hydra where discovred in 2005 at the same time.
- Quaoar- Quaoar has no moons discovered yet.
- Eris- Eris has one moon discovered named Dysnomia.
- Sedna- Sedna has no moons discovered yet.
- Ceres- Ceres also has no moons discovered yet.

Measurement and Size:

-The Kuiper Belt is 4.5 billion km from the sun and it is located behind Neptune orbit whit the smallest diameter of 303 kilometers (185 miles) and the largest one of 2,400 kilometers(1,500 miles). The largest dwarf planet is about five times smaller then the Earth and the smallest one is about fiftey eight times smaller than the Earth.
- Pluto is about 5 billion km from the sun whit a diameter of 2274 km.
- Sedna's diameter is about ¾ the size of Pluto resulting in a diameter of 1,800 km. Sedna is 130 billion kilometers (84 billion miles) away from the San which is 900 times greater that the Earth's solar distance.
- Quaoar has 1250 km in diameter and is his volume is equal whit the volume of 50,000 asteroids. Quaoar is at 4 billion km away from the sun.
- Eris is placed at a average distance of 6.3 billion miles away from the sun and it has the same diameter like Pluto.

Names origin:
- Charon in greek mythology, was the boat man who carried souls of the dead to the underworld. The underworld was a kingdom ruled by the god, Pluto.
- Sedna is the name of a sea goddess. Sedna the Sea Goddess.
- Eris is the Greek Goddess of discord and strife. Eris is evil. Her hobbie is to make trouble. She has an Golden Apple (apple of discord) that is so birght and shiny that everyone wants it. When she throws it among friends, their friendships come to an end and when she throws it among enemies war breaks out. She did this once during the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, this brought the Trojon war.
- The name Quaoar is from Greek Mythology. At the beginning there was chaos, then came Quaoar. He was sad because the emtyness in existince and began to dance, whirl and twirl all around while he sang the song of creation.
- Dysnomia is (the moon of Eris) the mythological daughter of Eris. Dysnomia is the demon spirit of lawlessness.
- Nix is the goddess of Night and the daughter of mischief.
- Hydra is a dog monster with nine indistructible serpent haeds and deadly poisonous blood.

Finally astronomers have accurately measured the size of the remote dwarf planet named Eris . They caught it as it passed in front of a faint star using the occultation technique. Eris also seems to be extremely reflective, probably because it is covered in a thin layer of frozen atmosphere.

Occultations are rather like eclipses —the background star disappears behind the object and reappears on its other side. By looking at these two events, astronomers can measure the size and shape of the occulting foreground object and if they also know the mass of this object they can then determine its density which can be used to determine the composition of the object.

Eris was identified as a large object in the outer Solar System in 2005. Its discovery was one of the factors that led to the creation of a new class of objects called dwarf planets and the reclassification of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet in 2006.

Eris is three times farther from the Sun than Pluto at the moment, and until now was believed to be about 25% bigger. But the new observations show that Eris is in fact almost exactly the same size as Pluto, with a diameter of around 2330 kilometres.

Because Eris also has a moon, called Dysnomia, astronomers have also been able to calculate the mass of Eris by a careful study of this moon's orbit. Using the new diameter and known mass, they then calculated the density of the Eris, which now appears to be greater than astronomers had previously thought. Eris seems to be a rocky body surrounded by a thick mantle of ice.

The dwarf planet turns out to reflect almost all of the light that falls on it — its surface is even brighter than fresh snow on Earth. Eris is probably covered in a very thin layer of frozen atmosphere that is likely to consist of frozen nitrogen mixed with methane. It is probably the result of the freezing of Eris's atmosphere as the dwarf planet's elongated orbit takes it far away from the Sun.These important new observations, made with relatively small telescopes, have allowed astronomers to measure Eris's properties better than ever before. This is another step towards understanding the mysterious objects that lie in the remote parts of our own Solar System.

The dozens of icy moons orbiting Saturn vary drastically in shape, size, surface age and origin. Some of these worlds have hard, rough surfaces, while others are porous bodies coated in a fine blanket of icy particles. All have greater or smaller numbers of craters, and many have ridges and valleys. Some, like Dione and Tethys, show evidence of tectonic activity, where forces from within ripped apart their surfaces. Many, like Rhea and Tethys, appear to have formed billions of years ago, while others, like Janus and Epimetheus, could have originally been part of larger bodies that broke up. The study and comparison of these moons tells us a great deal about the history of the Saturn System and of the solar system at large.

It’s been thought for some time that liquid might exist on Titan, and given its dense atmosphere that’s loaded with hydrocarbons, methane or ethane is a good guess. But evidence has been scant. The best so far was when the Huygens probe, launched by Cassini to land on Titan, appeared to have squished down in mud!

The image above, taken using the Cassini probe’s radar. It’s the shape of the features that’s interesting: sharp-edged, yet with rounded contours. That, plus the fact that liquid methane and ethane absorb radar, making them look dark just like those features, is very provocative. Cassini scientists are excited about the images, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots more about this very soon.

People will inevitably wonder if this has any impact on life evolving on Titan. Beats me. We really have no clue how life first sparked on Earth. We need liquid water now, but as far as I know it’s not clear exactly what Earth was like when life first arose (any biologists or archaeologists wanna enlighten us physical scientist-types about this?). And does that situation apply to Titan, with twice the Earth’s atmospheric pressure and temperatures of -180 Celsius?

Still and all, liquid existing on the surface of another world is really exciting. The more we look at other worlds, the more alien we realize they are… but the more like home as well.

We’ve sent space probes to every planet in our solar system. And the explore never ends. Not every world gives up its secrets easily, and perhaps none has been so difficult to probe than Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Bigger than Mercury, second only to Jupiter’s Ganymede, Titan has an atmosphere of nitrogen so thick it has twice the Earth’s air pressure at its surface.

That thick, hazy atmosphere is impenetrable by optical light… but infrared light can pierce that veil, and the Cassini space probe is well-equipped with detectors that can see in that part of that spectrum. And after 7 years, and 78 fly-by passes of the huge moon, there are enough images for scientists to make this amazing global map:

In this false-color map, what’s shown as blue is actually light at a wavelength of 1.27 microns — very roughly twice the wavelength the human eye can detect. Green is 2 microns, and red is 5 microns, well out into the infrared. When the final images are combined, what show up as brown regions near the equator are actually vast dune fields, grains of frozen hydrocarbons rolling across the plains in the relentless Titanian winds. White areas are elevated terrain. Near the north pole, only barely visible, are smudges on the map that have been shown to be lakes — literally, giant lakes of liquid methane!

So Titan is Earth-like, whit the difference that the temperature is roughly -180°C (-300°F), but the similarities are compelling. And Titan is loaded with organic compounds like methane, ethane, and more. A complex chemistry is certainly possible there, but complex enough to have formed life? No one knows. Just a few years ago I don’t think anyone would’ve taken the possibility seriously, but now… well, I wouldn’t rule it out.

Enceladus like Europa is a small icy moon that may have an ocean of liquid water under its surface. It’s a fascinating world a object that surprise us again and again whit great pictures; every shot of it is dramatic and intriguing.

Through the raw images from the distant spacecraft, there is a series of pictures depicting the tiny disk of Enceladus with the gigantic visage of Titan sliding past! The images animation showing the scene below:

[It helps to watch full-screen and in hi-res; I recorded it in 1080p. The images from Cassini look pretty good that way.]

Amazing, eh? Between some of the frames of the animation Cassini was programmed to change filters. That’s most obvious by looking at Titan itself; when the blue filter was used the atmospheric layers become more obvious — an upper level haze layer is dark in blue colors. Here’s one of those images using the blue filter:

The picture isn’t blue even whit a blue filter in use because the detectors used on spacecraft (and most telescope) cameras don’t really detect colors, they only detect light. Astronomers use filters to block out or isolate certain colors of light, say red, green, or blue. Each of those individual images is really just an array of numbers, so an individual filtered image can only be displayed as a grayscale picture like the one above. It’s when you add the three images together that true color emerges. The actual process is pretty detailed, but that’s the boiled-down version.